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Here it is. Another guide which will walk you through installing a Custom ROM on your nvidia Shield Tablet. What's a Custom ROM? It's a full fledged Operating System replacement/alternative for your Shield Tablet! Custom ROM usually come with a bunch of enhancements and allow for total configuration of all kinds of aspects of your tablet.

Installing a Custom ROM is pretty simple and is basically broken down into a few steps including enabling USB Debug Mode, getting your Tablet talking with your computer, flashing a Custom Recovery and then flashing the necessary files for the ROM of your choice. This tutorial will cover flashing the Team Win Recovery Project (TWRP) custom recovery, installing/flashing the BlissPop 3.8 Custom ROM, adding Google Play and rooting the tablet using SuperSU.

To flash the Custom ROM you'll have to gather up a few things including a modern computer, a Micro USB (Male) to USB (Male) cable and some files. Also make sure that you're Tablet is around 100% charged. You'll also preferably need a 1GB or more Micro SD card. Please remember that during the flashing of the Custom ROM (BlissPop) we will wipe the system so make sure to make backups of your data files before you proceed.

The first thing you will need to do is to gather up all of the files required for this to work. Here they are (note that new versions might have been released since this guide was published so the version numbers may be different). Note that I am using the nvidia shield tablet the 16GB Wifi model for this guide.

The first thing you'll need to do is to install the "minimal_adb_fastboot_v1.3.1_setup.exe" package. Run the installer and tell it to install to the "C:\fastboot" folder (for easy access). ADB is the Android Debug Bridge used to boot the Shield Tablet into 'Recovery' mode and fastboot is a tool used to manipulate the 'bootloader' - it allows you to flash system partitions on your Shield Tablet or any Android device at that matter.

Next you'll want to extract the contents of "SHIELDTablet_WHQL_USB_driver.zip" into "c:\fastboot\normal". You'll also want to place the 'twrp-2.8.7.1-shieldtablet.img' into the "c:\fastboot" directory for easy flashing.

Once this is done copy the 'BlissPop-v3.8-wx_na_wf-OFFICIAL-20150809-2012.zip' , 'BaNkS-dynamic-gapps-5.x.x-8-10-15.zip' and 'UPDATE-SuperSU-v2.46.zip' to the root of your Micro SD card and place it in the Shield Tablet. If you haven't used the Micro SD card yet you'll want to first format it as FAT32 or NTFS to make sure your Shield Tablet can read it.

Next go to developer options from the main settings page, and tick the USB debugging check box from the list of options.

Connect your Nvidia Shield TV to your PC with a USB cable.

Now navigate to your computers Device Manager (press the START button and in the search box type in 'Device Manager'). Once in your device manager locate your nvidia shield tablet called the "ADB Interface" and right click on it then select 'Properties' then click on 'Update Driver', then 'Browse my computer for driver software' and then point it towards 'c:\fastboot\normal' and press 'next'. If everything goes okay you'll have the drivers installed.

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Once you have the driver installed you'll need to reboot the nvidia Shield Tablet into it's 'bootloader'. To do this open up a CMD prompt, navigate to ADB and run the command 'adb reboot bootloader'. To do this press START, type in 'CMD', select 'cmd.exe' then type each command on it's own line followed by ENTER;

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c:
cd\fastboot
adb reboot bootloader​

Now you're device will be restarted into its bootloader which a driver will be automatically installed for it. Keep the CMD window open and after the Shield boots into the bootloader type this;

fastboot devices​

If you device is detected and it shows your devices serial number you are ready to move on. Now that your device is detected the following command is used to unlock your bootloader;

fastboot oem unlock​

You will now be presented with the bootloader unlock menu. After reading the disclaimer, use the Volume buttons to navigate to the "Unlock" option. Once the "Unlock" option has been highlighted use the Power button to confirm your selection of unlocking your bootloader. It's important to remember that unlocking the bootloader will wipe all your data from the device, and that a flag showing your warranty is void will appear at the bootloader screen.

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Next we're going to use fastboot to flash the TWRP Custom Recovery to the Shield Tablet. In the same window type in the following;

fastboot flash recovery twrp-2.8.7.1-shieldtablet.img​

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Note this will permanently flash to TWRP to the recovery partition allowing you to use its advanced recovery features with a stylish touch screen interface. There is an alternatives to TWRP, but I'm not going to cover it in this guide. Also note you may need to flash the recovery image a few times to get it to stick.

Now you'll want to reboot into TWRP and to do so first use the Volume buttons to move to Recovery then press the Power button to select the option. This will boot the tablet in 'Recovery Mode' allowing you to first wipe the system and then flash the Custom ROM and others we've already downloaded. You can navigate through the menus using touch.

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Once in 'Recovery' mode you'll want to use TWRP to perform a FULL factory wipe, wipe/system and dalvik cache as a precautionary measure before flashing the BlissPop, GApps and SuperSU binaries. To do this from TWRP main screen press Wipe. The default wipe mode will work fine so swipe the slider at the bottom to perform the wipe.

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Once the wiping is done select the Install option and then select the first of 3 files you'll be flashing, follow the prompts and allow it to flash. Follow up with the second and finally the last. BlissPop usually doesn't need you to flash SuperSU to gain root, but sometimes it fails so it's safe to go ahead and flash it for root access.

The nvidia dabbler application doesn't work and I've read reports that the official nvidia shield tablet wireless controller doesn't work yet, but I'm not sure because I don't own one. You can still download the official nvidia apps like the grid game streaming. That still works. I don't really use my tablet for gaming (other then emulators) so I'm not exactly sure what still works and what doesn't.

I was following your guide up until the point where I needed to boot into Recovery. I did that and attempted to Wipe the device but it didn't work. My puppy got into the garbage and I ended up stepping away for about a half hour. When I returned the tablet was no longer on and when I booted it up I get stuck with the Nvidia startup followed by teamwin and "Running OpenRecovery Script" some error about something being wiped and the device turns off. It reboots and gets stuck in this cycle. I have no idea what to do please help.

I was following your guide up until the point where I needed to boot into Recovery. I did that and attempted to Wipe the device but it didn't work. My puppy got into the garbage and I ended up stepping away for about a half hour. When I returned the tablet was no longer on and when I booted it up I get stuck with the Nvidia startup followed by teamwin and "Running OpenRecovery Script" some error about something being wiped and the device turns off. It reboots and gets stuck in this cycle. I have no idea what to do please help.

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You can try powering off the tablet and then holding "VOLUME DOWN" and press and release the "POWER" button while still holding the volume down button to boot and then try to access the recovery to see if you can sort things out.

You can try powering off the tablet and then holding "VOLUME DOWN" and press and release the "POWER" button while still holding the volume down button to boot and then try to access the recovery to see if you can sort things out.

Click to expand...

You did it! I was able to delete the old information and boot into BlissPop. Thank you so much for the guide and help

let me guess, you received a new tablet from recall and got instructed to dispose of the old one

Out of curisity, did you manage to make tablet react with a popup when stylus is removed or run any nvidia apps ?

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Good guess. I'm not sure about the stylus, but I got the nvidia app package installed and GRID still works. I'm not sure about PC Streaming because I never used that function. Oh, about the stylus, I've been told the dabbler (art/drawing) app doesn't work.

Try to turn off tablet and launch it again using volume up + power button. Choose bootloader, proceed to "Wipe" and "full wipe". And after this, proceed all steps from the guide again (install BlissPop, BaNkS and SuperSU and then reset)

Hey all, first thanks for the guide it was perfect. Although i ran into an issue with the "endless bootingloop" do to not being able to clear/wipe dalvik cache, data and internal storage properly or at all. No matter how I went about it it kept giving me errors. I ended up having to format the system (in TWRP and you have to type 'YES' for it to initiate the format) before it would let me clear/wipe these file/folders properly. Just wanted to share in case anyone else was having issues with this step.